in memoriam: robin williams (1951-2014)

it's a strange thing to feel sad about the death of a person you never met, especially so when said stranger is a celebrity. it is, perhaps, even weirder to feel like you have any sort of ability - any sort of right - to bear witness to the life of a person you don't know. and yet here i am, gutted in a totally unexpected way by robin williams' death, and ready to try to set down words that capture something of my sadness and his life.

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mostly, i suppose, the ache in my heart has something to do with watching Dead Poets Society nine years ago in a classroom across from a cornfield in lampeter. it all happened right smack dab in the middle of ordinariness, is what i'm trying to get at; i was distracted, giddy with the thought that my english teacher was ... creatively bending the rules w/r/t what we could watch in school. how was i to know that i was about to be given a huge, huge gift?

the tiny seed of a thought (that i could do poetry too) - that's what i'm talking about. which, okay, had to germinate for years and years (six years, to be precise), but: it was there waiting for the right time, nonetheless.

this is what i'm talking about; i watched this clip twice yesterday night and there were tears in my eyes by the end.

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details of robin williams' death keep trickling out into the public, and i have been uncomfortably reminded of david foster wallace's widow talking about how painful the months after his death were. "people read his autopsy report like it was great literature," she said, and the line lodged in my throat, a distasteful reminder of the way we are often voyeurs of suffering.

it is hard to understand why people like dfw and robin williams and aaron swartz and marina tsvetaeva and mark rothko and virginia woolf commit suicide. looking at their life from the outside, it is so easy to see the marvelous, larger-than-life gifts they had, and terribly easy to miss the suffering that chased after them like wolves.

mental illness. it's a thing, y'all. it doesn't discriminate, either, as someone so eloquently put in an article today. at the risk of repeating myself (i put this on facebook earlier):

"these aren't my words, but I read them recently on the internet & thought they deserved a share:

robin williams died today.

here is a list of things that robin williams was:

-funny

-sharp 

-kind 

-clever 

-and sad.

that’s important, the “and sad,” because sometimes sadness can feel like the only thing we are. it can feel all-encompassing. it can feel like the only thing anyone could possibly see, when they look at you: sad. that person is so, so, sad.

but there is always an “and.” we are never just sad. we are never only. we are always and.
we have all known people who were sad, who are sad; some of us are ourselves sad. being sad does not remove the other parts of us, though it can make them harder for us to see. when you are sad, you don’t necessarily feel like you are also funny, and sharp, and clever, and kind.

but you still are. you don’t have to feel like something to be it.

those things are written on your bones, they are woven into the fabric of your skin. sadness can feel so big, so big and overwhelming and complete, even when it is not a directed sadness. maybe especially when it is not a directed sadness, when it’s a depression that has no direct cause and nothing we can name.

sometimes the sadness is too big. people try to cut it out, or starve it out, or drink it down, or drug it silent. if this is you: i’m sorry. if this is you: you are not alone. if this is you: remember that the solution is never to give up, because you do not live in a vacuum. there are people waiting for you. there are films and songs and books and not-sadness waiting for you. i know that you don’t feel like waiting, but wait anyway.

if you need help, ask for it. here’s a link to crisis centers across the globe. (http://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres) if you live in the U.S., this is the national suicide prevention hotline: 1-800-273-8255.

robin williams died today, but the genie didn’t, and mrs. doubtfire didn’t, and peter pan didn’t. sean maquire didn’t, and professor philip brainard didn’t, and alan parrish didn’t. batty koda didn’t. john keating didn’t. you didn’t.

don’t."

(source: http://ofgeography.tumblr.com/post/94482062006/robin-williams-died-today-here-is-a-list-of).

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when i read about robin williams' suicide i thought of this tribute to dfw:

I am sad now because his words, his mind, were such a companion to me and to others, yet clearly a terrible master. I wish that I could have returned the favors he has done for me in some small way.

i wish robin williams could have understood the worlds he opened up inside of countless other human beings. i would have liked to tell him that i thought about the Dead Poets Society during the year in college that i started to think of myself as a writer. i would have liked him to know that.

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when i read about robin williams' suicide i also thought of his role as sean mcguire in Good Will Hunting. 

"It's not your fault."

mental illness, y'all. 

it's a thing.

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so - yeah. i don't know robin williams. i don't want to be a voyeur to his family's suffering. i can't really say anything about his life, or make meaning from his death. 

but i guess i can say that there are a lot of suicides that are a surprise to the people left behind, and maybe the best way to remember robin williams (and these other artists i love who also took their own life) is to say that i would always, always want to know. mental illness is not too scary for it to be spoken of, okay? i would want to know.

my blog stats say i have readers from 8 countries. i've had over 10,000 hits. who knows how many individuals have virtually visited me? 

to all you nebulous people out there, listen: if you're thinking about suicide, there are places you can turn to for help. you can leave me a comment, if you have to. we'll find someone to help you out.

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robin williams: 1951-2014. 

your life was a gift to many. 

thanks.

'you could put your life where your faith is'

I have a little circle of cardboard hanging in my room, and that's what it says:

you could put your life where your faith is

It's from MCC, and it's meant to sort of prod you into thinking about traveling to do missions. But it came to mind earlier today when I was well into my second hour of talking to Comcast representatives, trying to get my bill for internet access straightened out.

* * *

Most of what I've written this summer on this blog is about rejoicing in the mundane. I have even quoted David Foster Wallace, which totally came back to bite me today. 

I have to confess - I basically have this speech memorized. Not word for word (except a few parts), but I know the ideas really well. I've read this speech dozens of times. I think that it is brilliant, and it pretty much articulates the way that I want to live. 

So that is the history of this funny, ironic, enlightening moment today.

* * *

I was getting so, so frustrated today when I was talking to the Comcast people. I kept getting transferred around on the phones, and the hold music was starting to drive me up the walls.  The first guy had this really heavy accent, and after that it was like my annoyance threshold had been crossed. Everything else just put me more in the red zone. After getting transferred the third time to a different department, I could feel my anger settling into my body. And then I heard the hold music on the phone, and thought this line: soul-killing muzak or corporate pop. 

And then I was sitting there, thinking are you kidding me? I was thinking - this is where the rubber meets the road. This is my chance to put my life where my faith is. 

* * *

"By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do. "

* * *

 Like he says - like I've put on this blog before - it is almost unimaginably hard to force myself to consider the other person. I am always the center of my own existence, and to try to get outside of that is so, so hard. But today, after a struggle, it happened. When the 3rd (or 4th) person I spoke to on the phone told me I had to go chat with someone on the internet, instead of flipping out (what do you mean I need to USE THE INTERNET! I DON'T HAVE ANY INTERNET, LADY!), I said thank you, have a nice day, good-bye now. And I went and internet-chatted a comcast guy in the EMU library, and he told me that the deal I had signed up for wasn't available in my area (my computer screen clearly showed "available in zipcode 22802," which is Harrisonburg), and though I could feel my blood-pressure rising again, I told him thank you for your help, I see, thank you, goodbye. And I thought about how dismal it would be to sit by a phone every day, answering to people like me who were so annoyed and angry. I thought about the new testament verse that says "in humility, value others above yourselves."  I thought about Jesus living as a servant. 

It seems impossible, sometimes. Impossible to live the way that I know I ought to. But little by little, as I grow and experience grace and meditate on the life of Jesus, I bring more and more of my self in line with my ideals. Little by little I learn to put my life where my faith is. 

'the really important kind of freedom'

...it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. -G.K. Chesterton


I read this recently and it reminded me of the people who live at the house I work at and my last entry on this blog, the one about the life of a perpetual child.


I can't really imagine being able to exult in monotony. To never grow tired of the banal, the trite, the routine, the infinite small moments that make up a life. But I keep coming back to this thought - what other way would I want to live? A lot of life is banal, trite, routine, and small. If I can't rejoice in these things, than there is a lot of life that I am squandering.


And THIS makes me think of (who else) David Foster Wallace & his beautiful and terrifying commencement speech [Kenyon College, 2005]. In this speech, given to graduating college students (which I will be so, so soon!), DFW reminds us that how we see our lives is a choice. He reminds me every time I reread this that it is hard to stay aware and awake and alive, but it is always a choice. (I lifted quotes from this lovely website):



There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?" ...if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

...And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration.

...But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

...the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

...the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.